Chapter 1
Dear Mr. Malfoy,
We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted to the University of Oxford for the upcoming academic year. Your application was reviewed with great interest, and we were particularly impressed by your academic achievements and extracurricular activities.
We believe that you will make a significant contribution to our academic community and look forward to welcoming you to our historic institution. Enclosed, you will find further information regarding your acceptance, including details about enrollment procedures, housing, and orientation.
Congratulations on your acceptance, and we wish you continued success in your academic pursuits.
Sincerely,
Professor Liam Richards
Admissions Office
University of Oxford
Draco put the letter down and pinched the bridge of his nose. He wasn’t surprised he got into one of the best colleges in the world, he was fucking pissed off. He closed his eyes and let his compass of anger swing wildly until it landed on the only person who would overstep in his life like this and not be worried of the consequences.
He got up from his desk brusquely and went to the entrance hall. With a handful of floo powder, he stepped into the fireplace and shouted out his destination.
“The Zabini house.” He said clearly through clenched teeth.
The green flames engulfed him, then quickly spat him out like he was a bad meal on the hardwood floor of his former best mates’ home.
“What in the world— Oh, Hello Draco. How are you?”
“Don’t sweet talk me right now Daph. Where’s your husband?”
The beautiful, and heavily pregnant blonde witch attempted to struggle to her feet, but then just nodded to the side door that was propped open. It led outside to a garden and a large, open backyard. Draco nodded his thanks and started towards the door.
“Hey! Your manners are awful! Why are you here?” Daphne shouted at his back that was shrinking as he retreated away from her. Draco raised the letter over his head and shook it with a clenched fist. Daphne let out a little squeak of guilty participation.
Draco found Blaise trimming shrubs and doing something else with a bunch of uneven pieces of wood. He cleared his throat once he knew he was within his earshot. Blaise whipped his head around and he immediately noticed the crushed paper in his hand and recognized the logo in the corner. Blaise’s face split into a wide grin. He stood and went to hug Draco.
“Congratulations mate!—“
Draco let go of the letter and let it flutter to the ground. With both his hands he grabbed one of Blaise’s outstretched arms, and flipped him onto his back. Blaise burst out into laughter, expecting this reaction. Then he brought his legs close to his chest, and kicked Draco to the ground.
They Continued to fight until they both landed an equal amount of punches and were equally bloodied up.
Blaise was the first to speak after they both got to their feet and were headed towards the kitchen door to get some water and cast healing charms.
“I knew you’d get in.”
“Obviously. I had the top marks every year. That’s not the point. I wasn’t planning on going back to school, and you knew that.” Draco said as he brought his hand to his face and snapped his nose back into place. It stung like usual but he broke his nose twice a year so it was something he was accustomed to.
“Yeah, you want to take over your Father's business of exploitation, blackmail, and other various methods of criminal activities that aren’t like you?”
Draco scoffed at that. Not because he was wrong, but because Blaise knew him so well and it was fucking irritating. Blaise just nodded, knowing he was right. Again.
“It’s okay, you don’t have to say thank you.” Blaise patted Draco on the back and pushed him out of the way so he could enter the kitchen door first. He strolled over to his wife and tried to kiss her on the cheek, but she squirmed away.
“You’re all bloody!” She shrieked in a giggling tone, but eventually she relented and let him lay a gentle, and clean kiss to her cheek.
Draco and Blaise both pulled out their wands and began healing their faces and vanishing the messes the wounds left behind. Daphne invited him to stay for dinner which he accepted because he wasn’t in the mood to eat alone with the house elves tonight.
While they ate, Draco stared at the letter that Daphne repaired and he pondered. He envisioned his life if he stayed, and his future flashed before his eyes. Sure, it would be a good life, but not a great one. He would marry Astoria or Pansy, pop out an heir, and then take mistresses until he couldn’t keep it up anymore. He’d take over his Fathers business of barely legal activities and find a job with power inside the ministry.
When he envisioned his life if he went to Oxford, his mind swam with endless possibilities. It seems the decision was made before he finalized it in his mind, because Blaise noticed the look on his face and he started to cheer.
“I knew you’d make the right choice!”
“I haven’t decided yet.”
“Oh please.” Daphne said softly as she pushed herself up from the table. “There’s no reason for you not to go. You already got accepted, the funds wouldn’t even make a dent in your vault, and it would be stupid not to.”
“Baby, you glow when you’re right.” Blaise said as he stared at Daphne with doey eyes.
Draco made a disgusted sound and stood from the table. “On that note, thank you for dinner Daphne, and fuck you Blaise for meddling in my life.”
“You’re welcome!” Blaise yelled as the green flames took Draco back to the cold and lonely manor.
***
The next morning Draco woke up pacing. He’d be lying if he said his mind wasn’t already made up, but as he stared at his response to his Oxford offer, he couldn’t help but feel nervous. He kept reminding himself that if worst comes to worst, he could just drop out and pursue the life already planned out for him. He ran his fingers through his messy hair for the final time, then sent off the letter with an owl.
Not five minutes after he got dressed his father was knocking on his bedroom door and strolling in.
“Good Morning my son. Did you sleep well on your bed of deceit?” Lucius said in a cold tone.
“Father, my hair is still wet. Give me some time to wake up before you start your descent into madness for the day.”
Lucius did not respond with words, instead he pulled his hand from behind his back and shook the letter Draco had just sent out. Or so he thought.
“You got mail, then? I’m fresh out of letter openers so if you’ll excuse me.” Draco tried to step out of his room, but his father blocked the doorway.
“Deceit, madness, letters, lies, our future!” Lucius listed.
“Tired, early, hungry, wet hair, breakfast. Are we done rambling now?” Draco ran a towel over his hair leaving it shaggy and in his eyes, but just about dry.
“Don’t belittle me, boy! You know what you did! The only madness in this room is emitting from you. Oxford university? Have you lost your mind? We have a plan! Betrothal papers are sitting in my office for both Pansy and Astoria, just waiting for your signature when you make your choice—“
“I’ve made my decision, father. I’m going to university. If it makes you feel better, you can keep the betrothal drafts, but I will not be making any choices on that matter until after I graduate, or drop out. Whatever happens.”
“Whatever happens? Drop out?! No son of mine will be a drop out of University. Unthinkable. If you do this, you’ll do it right. Then after you graduate in four years time, you will marry one of those pure blooded witches and produce an heir. Choose whatever career you please, but if you fail you will have no second choice. You will follow in my steps.” Lucius raised his cane off the ground and let it drop back down with a thud, his signature move when he wanted to drive a point home.
“Whatever you say, father. Good chat. I have to go, so if you’ll excuse me.” This time Draco didn’t let his father block the doorway, he squeezed past with an accompaniment of a shove and walked right to the fireplace.
He arrived at the hopping pot, his favorite bar as of late. It was empty of course, because it was 8 in the morning. There were many reasons he loved this bar but one of the main reasons was because it was open twenty-four hours, even if they switched from liquor to coffee and other sober-up drinks from 2am-6am. Another reason he favored this bar was because there was a pretty cute bartender who worked at night and usually stayed until late morning.
Draco walked through the floo and dusted off his jacket before taking a seat at the bar top. Not a minute passed before a young woman with curly brown hair that stopped right above her breasts walked up to him. Her blue eyes sparkled as she leaned towards him.
“Hey you’re back, Can I get you anything?”
“I need a piece of paper, an envelope, and a pen. Then after that maybe a good shag.” She nodded eagerly then scurried off giggling to the back of the bar.
Four years of freedom, then he had to do what he and his father agreed on, and he planned to make the most of them.
After he wrote a new letter of acceptance to the acceptance offer, he sent it off with a spell to the ministry where it’ll get sorted to the muggle mail box, and go through the postal system. He didn’t trust owls right now.
He gestured Leah forward, and she eagerly climbed on top of the bar counter and started kissing him and unbuttoning her top. Just like every time he came here and they were alone, and occasionally when they weren’t with the help of disillusionment in corner booths, he fucked her on the counter and barstool. She wasn’t the best lay, but she was discreet and usually always in the mood. The best part about her was that she didn’t mind not talking after so he could clean himself, button his pants, pay if he ordered anything and leave.
Today however, as he was fixing his shirt, she decided to spark up a post sex conversation which almost startled him.
“You're going to Oxford?”
Draco side-eyed her with quirked eyebrows and then nodded.
“I didn’t mean to read the letter, I just got a glimpse of a few words. You know they don’t have magic there so you can’t floo.” She said as she began cleaning the counter with something in a bottle that smelled like shoe cleaner.
“Yes. I’m aware.”
“So..um, so will you be moving then?”
“Why does it matter?” Draco said in a clipped tone.
“Just curious if I’ll still see you.” She said with annoyingly large and hopeful eyes.
“I see. Don’t worry, I’ll make it appoint to stop by and fuck you no matter how occupied with other women and classes I get.” Draco winked at her and then turned and walked out the door before he could see the shift in her face.
He wasn’t sure where the change came from. He thought she was on the same page, that she was just a good fuck to wind him down. He needed to make sure she understood how he saw her before her head filled with any ideas.
Draco didn’t know where he was going. He didn’t want to go home, and he didn’t want to go hangout with Blaise and see his smug ‘You don’t need to say thank you, but you’re welcome’ face. So he found himself walking through the double doors into the tall and leaning building of St. Mungos hospital. His feet were moving of their own accord and led him into the elevator and without thinking about it, he reached up and pressed the button for the fourth floor, like he did everytime he came here.
***
A few months later and it was orientation day. Draco forgot about it, so he had no floo networks set up. His options were either a two hour train ride, or an hour on broom.
He cast a disillusionment charm on himself and the broom, and also a shield bubble so the wind didn’t mess up his hair or outfit. He managed to get there in forty-five minutes and was a half an hour early for orientation, so he found himself stashing his broom and wandering around.
The university consisted of a cluster of school buildings and offices but it looked more like a small town than a campus. He continued down the sidewalk and found a handful of flats available for renting. He looped around and approached one of the largest buildings that seemed to be a library by the sign, but the outside didn’t look like a library, it looked like a small castle. He went inside to kill some time.
He was walking through the stacks when he saw something that almost made him double over and fall to his knees. He hurriedly walked to the end of the stack and saw the side profile of the most stunning human being he’d ever seen in his life. It was like she was wearing an aura of sunlight and melted gold by the way she glowed, and he could only see half of her. She had these beautiful Caramel brown, unruly long curls that reached her waist and bounced as she walked. She was wearing a pair of slacks that fit her backside perfectly and then loosened and flowed out over her black and gold heeled shoes. Her top was just a simple black blouse but she pulled off the outfit so well it made his mouth water.
He wanted to walk to her, introduce himself and hopefully not make a fool of himself in the presence of such ethereal beauty, but he couldn’t get his feet to move. She turned around and made a small disgruntled noise, then set her stack of books on the table and darted back into the stack next to him. She quickly returned and made her way to the counter to check out a rather large armful of books for such a small lady.
Draco just stared, he probably looked like a creep but he really couldn’t tear his eyes away. He honestly wasn’t even looking at her physically anymore, but the image of her face that immediately and permanently burned itself into the front of his brain. Her eyes were such a light shade of brown they were golden when the light from the window hit them, and her smile would make angels swoon. He realized in that moment, that she was the epitome of his type. Every woman he hooked up with had some aspect of a physical quality this alluring woman had, but she had all of them. In that moment he literally felt his priorities shift.
He would spend the next four years just trying to speak to her if he needed to.
A young man with dark brown hair walked into the middle of the open space between Draco and his future wife, and startled him out of his thoughts.
“Orientation starts in ten minutes. If any newcomers are in here, please begin making your way to the west field. Orientation is being held outside due to remodeling.” He looked around and shrugged, and then headed out the door.
Draco noticed as soon as the young man stopped blocking his view, that his mystery lady was no longer there. He frantically scanned the small group of people making their way out of the library and he finally found her in front of the crowd, walking through the door that was being held for her. Draco’s eyes traveled up the arm that held the door and noticed his left arm was holding a familiar stack of books, and that the beautiful woman’s arms were now empty.
Draco practically lunged forward as if the spot he was standing in burned him, but by the time he reached the door the two of them were out of sight.